TABLE CLIFF AOT) KAIPAEOWITS PEAK. 297 



Many dikes are also visible around the gorge of Mesa Creek, while none 

 were observed in the bedded lavas farther south. 



TABLE CLIFF. 



The southwestern cape of the Aquarius ends at a high pass separating 

 the Escalante drainage from that of the Panquitch Ilayfield. This pass is 

 thus in the main divide between the drainage system of the Colorado and 

 of the Great Basin. At this cape the lava-cap of the Aquarius terminates, 

 but beneath it the Tertiary thrusts out a long peninsula to the southward. 

 The altitude of these beds is very nearly 11,000 feet above the sea, and the 

 peninsula which they form is Table Cliff. Upon its summit is an outlying 

 remnant of lava a few hundred feet thick, which was once, no doubt, con- 

 tinuous with the lava-cap of the Aquarius. The table is practically a large 

 butte left by the denudation of the surrounding country. I have explained 

 in the first chapter how the degradation of the Plateau Country has to a 

 great extent proceeded from a number of centers, extending radially out- 

 wards, wasting the edges of the strata, partly by direct attack upon the 

 fronts of cliffs, partly by the interlacing of canons, but each series of beds 

 being gradually wasted backwards, and their terminations forming ever- 

 expanding circles facing the center of erosion. The erosion of the Tertiary, 

 which spread from the center now occupied and inclosed by the Circle 

 Cliffs, has met the outward-spreading erosion from a center now occupied 

 by Paria Valley, and the cusp formed by the meeting of the two circles is 

 the locus of Table Cliff. The table is interesting on account of the splen- 

 did exposures of the Cretafceous system upon its western and southwestern 

 flanks. While the beds in the mass of the table are nearly horizontal, the 

 ledges of the Cretaceous projecting towards the west are turned upwards 

 at a very moderate inclination, and in passing to the floor of Paria Valley 

 we cross the whole Cretaceous system, of which the thickness here is 

 6,000 feet. The series consists of heavy members of bright yellow sand- 

 stone and gray argillaceous shales. Each member is from 300 to 500 feet 

 in thickness. The cliff sculpture is about as fine as any in the Plateau 

 Country. We have noted its appearance from the western side of PAria 

 Valley at the foot of the Paunsdgunt slopes (Chapter XI), and a nearer 



